‘Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who died in March after a fierce right-to-die battle that went all the way to the White House, was massively and irreversibly brain-damaged, pathologists announcing the results of an autopsy said on Wednesday.

The results supported clinical findings and the contention of her husband that Schiavo had been in a “persistent vegetative state” since collapsing 15 years earlier from a cardiac arrest that deprived her brain of oxygen, said Dr. Stephen Nelson, a forensic pathologist who assisted in the autopsy.

“She would not have been able to form any cognitive thought,” said Nelson, speaking with Pinellas County Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin at a news conference. “There was a massive loss of brain tissue.” ‘ (Reuters)

“I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office,” he said in a lengthy speech in which he quoted medical texts and standards. “She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli.”